Mrs Dalloway

First published on 14 May 1925 by the Hogarth Press, Mrs Dalloway is one of Virginia Woolf’s most celebrated novels and a defining work of literary Modernism. Set over a single June day in post-war London, it follows Clarissa Dalloway, an elegant society hostess preparing to give an evening party, as the ordinary rituals of her day awaken memories of youth, lost love and the choices that have shaped her life. Moving through Westminster, Mayfair and the streets of London, Woolf weaves together the thoughts and impressions of Clarissa and those around her, including Peter Walsh, an old admirer, and Septimus Warren Smith, a traumatised First World War veteran whose experiences offer a darker counterpoint to Clarissa’s world.

With extraordinary psychological sensitivity, Woolf transforms the events of an apparently unremarkable day into a profound meditation on time, memory, mortality, identity and the fragile connections between individuals. Her pioneering stream-of-consciousness technique allows past and present, public appearances and private consciousness to flow seamlessly into one another, capturing the complexity of human experience with remarkable intimacy. Written at a turning point in Woolf’s artistic development, Mrs Dalloway established her as one of the great innovators of the twentieth-century novel and remains a landmark of English Modernism.

From the book

“She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged.”

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

On Mrs Dalloway

“Mrs Dalloway has the world-defining ambition and scope of every great epic, from Dante’s Commedia to Goethe’s Faust.”

— Edward Mendelson, The New York Review of Books (2022)